The Cost of Being Teachable

The first and possibly most important lesson I learned in the manufacturing world was that nobody cares how smart you think you are. Bummer. I thought I was pretty smart. As a freshman and sophomore in high school I was the kid who dressed in khaki pants and a short sleeved button down every day. I looked like an undergrown Nasa engineer from the Apollo years and may have liked to become one myself someday. That dream started to sink as my performance in high-level math classes declined and I started to really struggle keeping pace with my friends - one of them is now pursuing a Ph.D in Chemical Engineering, one graduated in 3 years with his B.S in Computer Science, one graduated as the Salutatorian of our High School. Most of my friends are still way smarter than I am.

By the start of my junior year, the opportunity to spend four mornings a week in a machine shop sounded a lot more appealing than AP Chemistry and Calculus II, so I dropped both and enrolled at Warren Tech. On the first day I walked into the shop wearing my usual polo shirt, a nervous smile, and an absolutely unearned confidence that would have gotten me precisely nowhere on an actual machine. My machining experience at that point consisted mostly of amateur woodshop projects and an unhealthy curiosity about how things came apart. A few weeks of safety training and basic shop instruction quickly revealed that confidence and competence are not the same thing, but I remained stubbornly convinced that I’d be able to “fake it ‘til I made it.”

Mr. Joe Martin, our shop teacher, had an extremely low tolerance for bullshit - pardon the shop talk. As it turns out, he had a pretty low tolerance for me as well. Younger me did not seem to recognize that the two were related. Looking back, I think the thing that rubbed him the wrong way the most was that every time I asked him for help or instruction I had a tendency to deliver a lengthy preamble explaining what I had already done, exactly how I was going to continue, and why my plan as it stood was basically airtight except for this teeny-tiny-itty-bitty little pointer that I needed from him before everything went off without a hitch.

Bullshit. I needed help. Often I needed him to do some of the setups for me so I could see how it was supposed to look.

Obviously I wanted to do well in class and I wanted to make cool stuff, but I really didn’t want to ask for help, and I grew more averse to the idea after each of Mr. Martin's gruff corrections. Unfortunately, broken tools and poor surface finishes can’t be hid, and by the end of my first semester I don’t think I impressed anyone a whole heck of a lot.   

The second semester went a whole lot better because I started asking for help. By finals week I managed to produce a functioning 0.7mm mechanical pencil machined entirely from brass and steel round-stock on a Southbend lathe older than my parents. I would absolutely not have been able to do it without Mr. Martin’s help. I remained in the program for two more years, completed my associates degree, learned how to write code for CNC mills and lathes, and spent my entire third year as an independent study specializing in Swiss Screw Machining. You can bet I had to get much more comfortable asking questions at each step. In the end it turned out that Mr. Martin had a personality much like his favorite pair of Red Wing Moc Toe boots; tough like rawhide leather on the outside, but really a big softy on the inside.

My appreciation for Mr. Martin only grew when I took my first job out of school working as a CNC programmer at a tool and die shop. Not long after I started I was introduced to Randy. Randy was about 68 years old at the time. Randy had been a machinist since his 20’s. Randy operated heavy equipment on a farm in his off time. Randy smoked about a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes per day and survived on Burger King Whoppers and Dr. Pepper. Randy had absolutely no reason to buy what I was selling. I quaked feverishly in my boots the first time he stormed to my desk with a broken end-mill in one hand and my setup sheet in the other. I made a mistake and there was no denying it. I didn’t try to. I didn’t try to explain why my program should have worked, and I definitely didn’t try to tell Randy I knew exactly what I was doing; the broken end mill proved otherwise.

I wish I could say that was the only time something like that happened, but I would be lying. I was responsible for my fair share of broken tools and scrapped parts during my time at the machine shop, but my success rate improved with time and something else happened that I am even more proud of than my track record delivering parts - In one of the most surprising developments of my professional career, Randy took a liking to me! By the time I was getting ready to leave the company and return to school it was like we had started speaking the same language. He would often bring setup sheets, mine and others, back to the office in the evenings when our shifts overlapped and ask me to walk him through the order of operations that had been chosen. He would suggest changes and I could apply them or explain clearly the alternative process. My scrap rate on his machine was lower than on any other. At various times if work was slow I would find myself out on the shop floor shooting the breeze with Randy while a part ran in his machine.

It turns out that I am actually deeply thankful for the mistakes that I made in the shop. I am thankful, on one hand, that they were never too catastrophic to be mended, but on the other hand I am simply thankful that I made a mistake here and there. If I had somehow entered my first job in the field and been the prodigy of all prodigies I would maybe have learned more about machining, but I never would have learned anything about myself or grown meaningfully as a person.

Obviously, if we’re just talking red and black, every shop would prefer a 100% success rate, and every employee would prefer their pride be left intact. As an eighteen, nineteen, and twenty-year-old programmer though, those broken drill bits and scrapped widgets paid off so much more than any accountant's 15% slush fund for errors could begin to measure. Some extremely important lessons were learned through failure that I don’t think could have been bought. 

Of everything that I will remember from Omni-X, the thing that will most satisfy me is the reputation I built as a reliable, responsive, helpful, and efficient worker. It is important that I don’t forget most of that reputation was built by owning my mistakes and taking responsibility for making it right. There were multiple relationships that followed the same trajectory as my unexpected friendship with Randy, and I assure you none of them came about because I was particularly admired for my “mad skills”. Obviously competence is important, especially when blueprints are toleranced to 3 decimal places, but it took me too many years to realize that humility is the determining factor in whether or not people who know more than you are willing to spend the time teaching you.

It is still too often difficult for me to graciously accept feedback. In moments when I feel challenged or begin to act defensively, I continue to remember my relationships with Mr. Martin, Randy, and many of the managers I worked with all grew when I was willing to swallow my pride and say, "Yes, that was my mistake. Let me make it right.”